I recently bought some Kerrygold butter from Trader Joe’s and it has no flavor. It doesn’t even taste like butter, it just tastes like airy grease. I was lead to believe this was one of the best butters in the world, but, bleh. Where did I go wrong?
Very weird, it taste like butter to me and a lot better than my normal store brand or land o’lakes.
Maybe trader joes didn’t handle it well?
I have to agree. Everyone raved about Kerrygold so I tried some: meh.
My BOC (Butter of Choice) is Plugra unsalted. It’s a European style butter but made in the USA.
My fancy-schmancy HEB Central Market store has a bazillion types of butter… sigh… “Had we world enough and time,” tasting all this butter would be no crime. Sadly, it would be a crime, so I just stick with my Plugra.
But I’m interested in other people’s faves (if that’s okay with the OP).
Well, of course it’s going to be better than Land o’Lakes. Try some Plugra.
I like the President brand from France.
Same..Kerry gold is very grassy. Not much else. I added salt and it was usable.
I mean, I feel 100% Kerrygold tastes better than the default store brand / Land O Lakes butter, probably enough better to justify the cost increase when I’m cooking something butter forward, but it reminds me of the current French Restaurant thread. After a while, considering the enthusiasm/hype for it, you can’t be help feel it disappoints in comparison to the unreachable expectations.
I do agree that various high-fat butters produced locally or outside the USA are as good, and some better. And I like some cultured butters as well, depending on the application.
But using fresh (or at least fresher) butter, using the one with the right salt content (I dislike unsalted butter), and keeping it safe from unpleasant fridge odors is always important. I would also say something like using it in “moderation” as well, but that’s the healthy me talking, the Cafe Society me is shouting “Fat is Flavor!” and clubbing healthy me from behind.
The New York Times thinks it is the best.
My suspicion is y’all grew up with whatever it was you had back then and that is what you are used to and everything else tastes a little off.
I grew up with Land O’Lakes but I read somewhere (sorry, no link) that I do not agree with their politics so I do not buy their product anymore. Even though it is a fine product.
I currently use Challenge Butter and like it. YMMV of course.
I like Kerrygold too but it is expensive and I like having the easy measurements on the wrapper which they do not do. That said, I’d happily use it.
Some of the best butters I’ve tasted were French. Isigny Ste Mère is one of the best I’ve tasted. I think some of them are cultured a little and this emphasises and enhances the dairy flavours.
Maybe you have COVID?
Besides the obligatory “I can make it better myself” bit I am compelled to add by longstanding tradition (but seriously - everyone, do try making your own butter, it is easy and so, so good!), I find Kerrygold to be very good butter. Not lightly-cultured-French-artisanal good, but certainly the best butter I can buy in local grocery. I’ve never found it to lack flavour.
Since there has been some talk about cultured butter and the OP is about flavor, I thought I’d point out that Kerrygold unsalted is cultured while the salted variety is not. The unsalted also has some skim milk in it, which may or may not have anything to do with the cultures.
Also, put me in the group that finds Kerrygold quite nice.
As I usually buy “sweet” butter, whenever I do buy Kerrygold, it is always the salted version.
I grew up in a margarine household, in fact my Mom called it Oleo. So butter, even cheap butter is a big taste improvement.
i like kerrygold. i also like danish creamery.
Put me in the “Kerrygold is boring” camp.
Basically there are two major types of butter. Cultured and uncultured or “sweet cream” butter. Cultured butter is made from cream that’s undergone a fermentation process prior to churning, while uncultured butter is just straight cream that’s churned.
That culturing step adds a bunch of flavor- most European butter is cultured butter, and has a characteristic flavor from that, as well as whatever the terroir adds to the milk. Brands like Plugra (plus gras, heh), Isigny Ste. Mere, Le Gall, etc… are all cultured butters.
Land O Lakes and Kerrygold are both uncultured butters. Which means they have a less intense, more subtle butter flavor that’s primarily based on the milk that went into the butter.
Salt also makes a huge difference. I find that unsalted uncultured butter doesn’t taste far off from shortening, while a good salted French Normandy butter is kind of a revelatory experience on fresh bread.
There’s nothing wrong with Kerrygold and it’s better than US mass-market butters, but for the price, it’s about as uninteresting as butter can be.
good info…as for Kerrygold, they sell big tubs of it at my local Costco for prices comparable to regular boring supermarket butters, so I always grab one when they are available. It is marginally, but noticeably, better.
Maybe because I’ve been eating Land O’ Lakes butter for the last 40 years, I found Kerrygold so underwhelming that it took a couple of months to finish up. Very tasteless, greasy, disappointing.
Taste is a matter of … well, “taste”. Bio mechanically, one would think that everything would taste the same to everyone, but we all know that isn’t true.
Bingo. In many respects, our taste buds are “trained” from the time we’re children.
Please feel free to ignore my anecdotes earlier about brand/butter quality if talking about Whipped butter of any sort. I have poor experiences with that across pretty much all brands so I don’t buy it at all. Not judging anyone who does like it, but it doesn’t work for me so I can’t give even an IMHO on that particular subset.
Costco also sells a butter from New Zealand under their Kirkland brand that I quite like.
The latest Consumer Report magazine has an article on butters. Iirc, Plugra was at the top of the recommended butters and KerryGold was near the bottom.